Google Wants to Index and Optimize Your Body

Google’s new “moonshot” project isn’t a new fancy gadget, but the fanciest gadget of all: the human body.

Announced Friday in The Wall Street Journal, Google’s Baseline Study will aim to define “healthy.” The thinking, as explained by Google X’s molecular biologist Andrew Conrad, is that knowing exactly how a fully functioning human body works might aid in the earlier detection of disease. Google X is the technology giant’s research arm, where Google Glass, driverless cars, and other headline-grabbing projects have been conceived.

By collecting a large set of genetic data—Google plans on starting with 175 people, but will later expand to “thousands”—and applying its considerable computing power to the samples, Google thinks it can identify “biomarkers” that may signify either advantages or deficiencies that a particular patient may have:

The study may, for instance, reveal a biomarker that helps some people break down fatty foods efficiently, helping them live a long time without high cholesterol and heart disease. Others may lack this trait and succumb to early heart attacks. Once Baseline has identified the biomarker, researchers could check if other people lack it and help them modify their behavior or develop a new treatment to help them break down fatty foods better, Dr. Conrad said.

Google X will also continue to create more wearable technology, and Baseline participants will use them throughout the study. The suggestion is perhaps obvious: Google is making a bid to be among the biggest players in the future of medicine, and it wants to have not only the human data, but also to provide the diagnostic and perhaps treatment tools that become relevant as a result of its own data analysis. Thus the contact lenses that will monitor blood sugar levels, and more.

Setting a “baseline” is a powerful thing to do; if you’re the first to define an organism’s basic needs, you’re at the head of the pack when it comes to acting upon that information. Google already controls an incredible number of human interactions, from information pathways (Google search), the conditions inside people’s homes (Google acquired Nest, a “smart” thermostat that does much more than the one you likely have in your apartment), to communication tools (Google’s Android mobile software, Gmail, Google Talk, etc.). When paired with a collection of genetic data unlike any the world has seen to date, constant data collection from the entirety of these services offers an overwhelmingly textured view of humanity.

While the Baseline Study is a long shot that will require years of work, it hints at other potential standards. Imagine, for example, a world in which a technology company can define a baseline level of happiness for a given population, and then market goods or services against that metric. That’s essentially what marketing and advertising have always tried to do, but just like our current understanding of “healthy” is spread across innumerable testing points, so too is our understanding of human mood and desire. Perhaps one day, Google will try to change that, too.